Purr of Light
by sugar92
Summary: He entered M's office with a glow akin to misery and followed her out of the door with nothing but irony-induced desperation. A new quartermaster had been selected for him. Of course.


This work was based on this post / prompt / fanart:

post/43563248184

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He entered M's office with a glow akin to misery and followed her out of the door with nothing but irony-induced desperation.

A new quartermaster had been selected for him. Of course.

After all the "Venice fiasco" as he sympathetically remind himself quite often, after-, after Vesper, he had struggled on for revenge.

But after he was shot by Miss Moneypenny (he had promised himself to never anger the girl when she was carrying firing weapons on her person), after M's orders and his consequent short "vacation" as it was being called in the HQ, it was but natural that he had been assigned a new quartermaster.

How many Qs had he had been assigned with already? For the life of him, he couldn't remember.

They were nothing significant anyway. Most of the time they looking down to him, clad in black suits as if mocking themselves to be almost-agents, with their strict, judgmental ever-lasting stares.

No one who had ever stayed with him overtime to re-discuss the details of the mission, whether he had a question or not, muttering something about their 'brilliant brains' being hundreds time more useful than him to the nation. Utter jerks, the lot of them.

Bond, speaking the truth, had always complained about them to M.

There wasn't one who agreed with him on anything. Was it about the mission, communication time, status reports, the assets, his very movements, nothing.

And there was never a competent one. Was it too much to ask for a competent quartermaster?

And whether one was competent, he or she certainly wasn't efficient and he couldn't cope with anything but _efficiency_, on his part.

From the looks M too often threw at him during recap meetings, she wasn't the least pleased with his temper lately.

She called it "attitude", as if he was a boy at school, and when she thought he was too concentrating reading his report, he could hear her mutter the words "Bloody _pdsd_" and "Venice".

Those time he would tell himself to quit it and get out of there as quickly as possible, possibly with his dignity still in one piece.

This Q was different, though, he knew.

He knew because M had crinkled her right nostril when she extracted the unbelievably thin folder from the drawer.

However, she didn't utter a word more than what necessary for him to understand he was to be introduced now and nothing more, as her usual. But there was _something_.

Something in the air, and he couldn't quite put his finger on it though, and it irked him consistently.

They walked several corridors until Bond didn't recognized the turns anymore.

To his memory, he hadn't been there. Ever.

He had memorized the HQ's map on his third day, of course, like any other decent double-o, but he had never actually been in that section before.

He didn't ask where they were going, of course.

Right exit below the double-o's assets storage rooms, this was the experimental department.

_Hic Sunt Leones_. He could almost see the phrase engraved on the white walls.

He wondered if M had a new asset to retrieve _en passant_, or maybe a new access badge still in probatory period.

M slid her key, entered the code and let the screen take her index fingerprint.

Such a high security level, Bond could not explain it to himself.

They entered the room.

The darkness was so thick it took him several seconds to adjust to it, then M switched on the lights.

Small, orange and red sparks dimly lit the semicircular black walls and a black, polished pavement.

A soft purr underneath and surrounding them indicated the presence of the server of a large computer working endlessly.

This, until M walked to the control pad and entered a string of numbers and letters, switching the general color from orange to blue, as a thousand power lights more lit up the walls.

They were tiny, so tiny they looked like a whole wall of light embedded underneath the real, black one, as if Bond and M were strolling in a dark-mirrored aquarium on a chilly morning.

But this was not an aquarium.

M and Bond were certainly not strolling in a leisure walk, (Bond didn't remember when and whether he and M ever crossed the distance of more than a couple of meters side by side without one of them being on a mission or in the process of being targeted by a psychotic terrorist and/or serial killer.

The only element similar to the reality was the chill.

The double-o agent located the streams of cold air in two conducts in the opposite ends of the room.

One was just behind him, the other one in the adjacent part of the room which was now opening to M's code.

Why would the headquarter invest so in a computer? Why was it so special?

He didn't have to wait long to be answered.

The larger part of the room was circular, the walls aglow with blue and its graduating variations.

Several rectangular screens were monitoring something, or _someone_, for Bond noticed the striking similarity to the alerts one could find in every hospital.

In the middle of the room, there was a bundle of wires.

A faint breathing sound could be heard.

Or maybe it was just his imagination.

M turned to him, her mouth tightening in a strict line.

She was standing by his side but her gaze was accurately pointed to him. She was vigilant of him, of his every movement, of his upcoming reaction.

"007, I meet your new quartermaster." She stated in a dry tone.

The bundle of wires shifted and what Bond's mind could or would not previously make out, turned out to the a human.

Or rather, a human-like figure.

For no human being, as Bond recalled, lived while attached with wires from his scapula and spinal column to a computer embedded in the walls of a room as large as a small pub.

Last he checked, such a…._thing_ would be call a robot.

So. The human-like_ bot_ turned around and locked eyes with him, instantly.

He didn't have anything he saw in those crappy sci-fi movies, he didn't have lasers in his eye bulbs, but _eyes_. Artificial glass globes of a green so intense you could distinguish the shade in all the bloody bluish glow of the room.

He tried not to stare at them.

'_Focus. Focus on something. On anything_.' And focus he did.

On his absurdly thin black trousers.

On his impossibly geeky beige cardigan, his white shirt, completely bottomed up.

On his thick, unnamed glasses.

On his jet-black, curly locks. His hair was so curly, he looked like a mere teenager, 21 at maximum.

Bond almost shuddered at the thought. _Good lord_. There must some mistake. M certainly didn't mean….

But the woman was at his side, her dark purple jacket had turned into the shade of the late Scottish sunset, in that ghastly light.

She was staring at the….at the….at _it_.

And he-_it_, _he_, was staring at Bond. _Pointedly_, _knowingly_ staring at James.

"Q." said M with a sigh, proving that his mind was as sane as hers.

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And that, that was worried Bond most, at the moment.

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End file.
